


Repartee

by statusquo_ergo



Series: a fire in the sage's mansion [15]
Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Maybe Not Crack, Maybe just very Season 1, Mike is a teacher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27167263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: The things Mike puts up with for these kids…
Relationships: Mike Ross/Harvey Specter
Series: a fire in the sage's mansion [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/970797
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	Repartee

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Hi, if you still take requests, recently I've been thinking how in a diff profession au Mike xould be totally that one teacher? The real passioante one, who knows all of his kids, and is literally a phonecall away if they get in troble- and one of them does, and that is how Mike meets lawyer Harvey. Also wanted to tell you that your fics always brighten up my day, so thank you for sharing them with us<3
> 
> Thank you love! Now... Okay, this wasn't meant to be crack when I started, but honestly I've been reading so much of it recently that it was bound to happen. So, you know. I'm sorry, please don't take anything too seriously.

Mike tugs the quarters of his jacket, smoothing his hand down over the pocket flap and putting on his winningest smile. Today is a good day, a _great_ day, and everything is just fine. Everything is wonderful.

Police precincts are the worst.

A uniformed officer rounds the corner toward him and he takes a step forward, trying to project confidence and still manage as nonthreatening as he possibly can. “Excuse me,” he says, “I’m looking for Peter Green.”

The young man looks at him bemusedly. “You sure you’re at the right precinct?”

“The uh, the 104?” Mike pulls his phone out of his pocket, holding up the call log as though it’ll prove anything. “That’s what they told me.”

The officer shakes his head. “Sorry man, I don’t know any Peter Green.”

“Are you sure?” Mike follows along as the guy tries to walk away. “He was arrested on his way home from school, about three fifteen?”

Gnawing on his lower lip, the officer looks over his shoulder and jerks his thumb toward what looks to be a large room arranged like a dimly-lit office, rows of tin desks each outfitted with a blotter and banker lamp that remind Mike of the basement of his grandmother’s house before she had to move into a state facility.

“He in there?”

Mike furrows his brow. Don’t they have interrogation rooms for this kind of thing? Nah, that’s probably on him for watching too many cop shows; those kinds of things must be reserved for cases a little more pressing than whatever they’ve hauled Peter in here for.

“Sir?”

“Huh?” Mike blinks a couple of times. “Oh uh, yeah, I, I see him, can I just…”

The officer waves him on, making a break for it in the opposite direction. Mike tries not to take offense as he edges over the threshold, toward the desk where Peter sits talking at a guy in a collared shirt who couldn’t look much less interested in what he has to say.

“Excuse me,” he says, setting his hand on the back of Peter’s chair. “I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.”

Collared shirt guy looks up at him wearily, the dark smudges under his faintly red eyes speaking to too many hours on the clock and too little patience for any of this shit. A placard on his desk proclaims him to be “Det. L” something, the majority of the name obscured by stacks of books and stained coffee cups and an honest to god Rolodex that combine to add plenty of credence to his haggard appearance. Mike smiles affably, and the detective waves toward Peter.

“You some kinda lawyer or something?”

Mike fidgets with his lapel.

“No sir,” he says as the guy sighs. “I’m Mister Green’s teacher.”

“Legal guardian?”

“Um.” Mike looks down at Peter, who stares back at him imploringly. “Only between the hours of eight and three.”

“I said _legal_ guardian,” the detective repeats. “Look, buddy, if you’re not this kid’s attorney, or his parent, you got no more right to be here than his bus driver.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing someone called _me._ ”

Peter goes sort of rigid in his chair, and Mike wonders if he recognizes the intruder’s voice. It’s not his father, Mike is fairly sure, or at least it doesn’t sound like the man he remembers from their last parent-teacher conference, and also that one time he made a home visit to check up on Peter after a burst appendix unexpectedly put him out of commission for a week. Maybe an uncle? Older brother?

An unfamiliar man steps past Mike without a second glance, his polished shoes and silk tie speaking to a world far beyond anything Peter’s ever been privy to, and Mike finds his back muscles tensing up along with his rising suspicion.

“I guess Legal Aid must’ve upped their salary cap,” the detective says dryly.

The stranger smirks, his perfectly fitted suit jacket riding up in exactly the right way as he slips his hands into his pants pockets.

“I wouldn’t know,” he says. “Harvey Specter, Pearson Hardman.”

“Never heard of it.”

Harvey Specter smiles indifferently. “You’ll be amazed to learn that’s not the worst news I’ve heard today. But your narrow comprehension of the legal community aside, I’ve been retained on behalf of Mister Green, and seeing as how you haven’t got any evidence against my client, I think we’ll be leaving now.”

“We picked him up with two ounces of ace in his pocket!”

“And we await your summons.” Mister Specter takes his left hand out of his pocket and slaps it down on Peter’s shoulder. “But in the meantime, seeing as how none of us is under arrest, there’s a Best of Shark Week special on the Discovery Channel tonight and I’d like to be home in time for the opening credits.”

The three of them instantly become irrelevant as Detective L-something pulls a disgruntled face, waving them off and opening one of the myriad files piled around his workspace. Mike takes a hesitant step backwards as Peter slowly rises out of his chair, his gaze darting between the cop and his…attorney, apparently, until Specter grabs his arm and hauls him out of the room, leaving Mike to follow at their heels.

“Hey man,” Peter says, trying to pull his arm back as Specter grips it tighter.

“Keep your mouth shut.”

Mike’s scowl isn’t quite as vicious as Peter’s when their merry crew shoves through the precinct doors into the late afternoon sun, but it’s close enough.

“Mister Specter,” Mike says, hurrying forward to halt Specter in his tracks, “look, I appreciate you coming down here, but you have to know there’s no way Peter is going to be able to afford to keep you on as counsel.”

Terribly affronted at either at Mike’s stopping him up or the idea that he isn’t already well aware of his own price point, Specter finally drops his hold on Peter’s arm and somehow manages to look down at Mike, even though they’re more or less the same height.

“Do you think I came out here out of the goodness of my heart?” he asks. “My fee’s already been taken care of.”

Mike scoffs. “I hate to break it to you, but I think someone’s scamming you.”

“No one’s ‘scamming me,’” Specter says, rolling his eyes. “I’m working this case pro bono, my boss is an alumna of your damn school.”

“Oh, so your heart’s really in this one, huh?”

“Hey, pal—”

“Mike Ross.” Mike sticks his hand out, grinning brightly on the off chance that it might throw Specter off his game. “I’m Peter’s teacher. American History.”

Specter looks down at his hand for a moment, then back up at his face, drawing back slightly as though Mike is preparing to punch him.

“Congratulations.”

Mike drops his hand and smiles wider.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

Pursing his lips, Specter narrows his eyes, even more wary than before.

“I didn’t know it was the norm for high school history teachers to keep law degrees hung up on their office walls.”

“Yeah,” Mike shrugs, “can’t say that I do, but I think I’ve got my bar exam certification stuck at the bottom of my desk drawer.”

Assuming his furrowed brow and angled posture are anything to go by, that was just about the last thing Specter expected him to say. Well, that’s not unusual; it takes most people by surprise, he’s not so special.

“You seem pretty intent on involving yourself in this mess,” Specter says. “I hope you’re not hiding some kind of scandal that’s going to come out and bite me in the ass.”

Fancy that, the guy does have a sense of humor. Mike smirks again, settling his hand on his hip.

“Keep me in the loop and I guess you’ll find out.”

Staring at him another moment or two, Specter draws his shoulders back, resetting his poise, and turns to smack Peter upside the head.

“Hey!”

“You,” he says, “get rid of the pot. And you’d better not get caught with any more before this goes away.”

Peter glares at him petulantly, rubbing his hand through his hair, and Mike frowns.

“He’ll stay out of trouble.”

Reaching into his jacket, Specter hands Mike a business card. “I’m holding you to that,” he says. “In the meantime, there’s my number. Don’t call me.”

Mike looks down at the card bewilderedly.

“But what if I need updates?”

A town car pulls up at the curb, and Specter slides in without a backwards glance.

“Mister Specter?”

The car speeds off. Mike looks down at the card again.

After a minute or so, Peter clears his throat.

“So…am I off the hook?”

Slipping the card into his pocket, Mike arches his eyebrows.

“Let’s talk to your dad about that.”

“Dammit…”

\---

The case doesn’t exactly vanish into thin air, but when it becomes evident that the detectives who picked up Peter were acting mostly out of frustration with the lack of evidence in some big drug trafficking channel thing that’s been going on for about four years, Mike figures they don’t have to worry too much about any jail time or anything like that. Though Peter is more than happy to put the whole mess behind him and never give it a second thought, Mike figures _somebody_ ought to thank Harvey Specter for his assistance, or at least ask him who his mysterious boss is so Mike can thank _t_ _hem_ for standing by their alma mater at such a critical time.

“Don’t call me,” Specter said, but he didn’t really _mean_ it. Right? Why else would he have given Mike his card? With his phone number on it? Right along the bottom?

It’s kind of stupid to get so hung up on this, actually. It’s not as though Mike knows the guy particularly well, and he didn’t exactly make a great first impression with his sarcastic elitism, but damn, he hauled ass all the way out to Queens for basically a five minute errand, all just to get some poor kid he doesn’t even know out of a stupid charge that any first year law student would’ve been able to handle in their sleep. There’s something different about him, and Mike wants to know what it is.

“Harvey Specter’s office,” a woman’s voice answers. Mike frowns, but what was he expecting, honestly? Harvey’s a big-shot attorney at a major corporate firm, of course he has a secretary. They barely know each other, of course he wouldn’t give Mike his direct line.

“Uh, hi.” He clears his throat. “My name is Mike Ross, I uh, I wanted to thank Mister Specter for some work he did for a student of mine.”

“Mister Specter doesn’t accept solicitations from clients, thank you.”

“What? No, I—” Mike laughs uncomfortably, raising his fist in front of his mouth. “I just wanted to say thank you, I know it was a little…beneath him.”

The woman pauses a moment. “Excuse me?”

“Oh god, no, I didn’t—” Mike winces and presses his palm to his forehead. “I mean it was— It was basically rookie work, and he still came out and took care of it personally, I just…really appreciate it, and I wanted to tell him how much I—appreciate it.”

“Mm-hm.” The woman hums with an obvious smile. “You’re not an English teacher, by any chance?”

Mike sighs. “American History.”

“I see.”

He waits for her to go on, but she doesn’t seem to see the point. Which, that’s fair. Mike clears his throat again.

“Look, I’m not asking him for a lunch date or anything,” he says. “I want to talk to him for like, five minutes. I don’t even need to come by and embarrass him at the office, we can do it over the phone, I just want to tell him how much it means to me that he went the extra mile for one of my kids.”

The woman makes a soft, breathy sound; she’s probably laughing at him. Nice cover, lady, very subtle.

“And I’m sure you have no intention of asking Mister Specter to do any more favors for this kid of yours.”

“What?” Mike frowns. “No, the, the case is…gone, it was nothing, it’s— It’s over. Look, I swear, all I want to do is thank him. Can you, can you give me an address where I can write to him? If I can’t talk to him, I can send him a letter? Or a card? Or an uh, an email?”

She’s definitely laughing at him now, and Mike tries not to be offended as she clicks her tongue to reset her disciplined tone.

“Mike Ross, you said?”

Mike sighs.

“Yes ma’am.”

She hums, and he hears a keyboard clacking in the background.

“I’ll let him know you called.”

“Thank you,” he says. By the time he’s finished speaking, she’s already hung up on him, and he wonders if she cut him off halfway or ignored the salutation entirely. Moving the phone away from his ear, he looks at it balefully and tries to decide whether the conversation felt more like a win or a setback. It probably depends on how long it takes Harvey to call him back.

Okay, so, that’s a start.

\---

“Serena— Serena, I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying that we’ll have time to talk about Exxon’s role in perpetuating the climate crisis when we start discussing modern America, but right now we’re talking about mass construction of highways in the nineteen twenties.”

“Didn’t you _just_ say the funding for all those highways came from tax money from selling gasoline?”

Mike scrubs his hand through his hair and wills his encroaching headache to back the fuck off.

“I did,” he says. “It did. And I promise you, we’ll get to it. But the article I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of was published in nineteen seventy-seven. And again, we’re talking about the twenties.”

Folding her arms over her chest, Serena rolls her eyes and glares out the window, and Mike takes a breath and steps back to the board.

“Alright,” he says, picking up a piece of chalk. “So let’s talk about those taxes. Mass production contributed to a rise in the economic power of the middle class. The federal government started cracking down on unions. Who wants to start us off on that one?”

The predictable lull settles over the classroom as half of his students try to gather their thoughts and the other half wait to see if Jesse or Abby is going to answer first. Though he tries to avoid the Socratic method on the grounds that it’s basically the worst, the temptation grows stronger by the second, and he’s very much on the verge of pointing to the class at random and seeing what happens when his phone begins to ring and they’re all saved the trouble of having to figure it out.

A few of the kids exchange uncertain glances until Peter settles back into his seat with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“You gonna get that, Mister Ross?”

Mike looks at him flatly. “No, Peter, I am not going to ‘get that.’”

The phone keeps ringing, and Serena puts only the smallest effort into biting down on her smile. Mike looks down at the display screen with a frown.

Harvey Specter.

God damn.

Mike picks up the phone.

“Actually I do have to get this,” he says, fully aware that he has no such obligation but feeling the weight of it all the same. “Okay… Okay, everyone read chapter twenty and see what you can make of those review questions, alright, we’ll pick this back up on Monday. Class dismissed.”

No one gets up at the directive, but when Mike holds up his phone and gives them a pointed look, they seem to get the message, gathering their bags and shuffling toward the door. Unsurprisingly, Peter is the last one out, trying to linger to overhear at least the beginnings of the conversation, but Mike sneers at him, and he sneers back and closes the door behind him.

Mike presses the phone to his ear.

“Mister Specter,” he says. “You certainly do have a talent for clearing a room.”

“And hello to you too, Mister Ross.”

“Is that really all you have to say for yourself?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

To his credit, Specter legitimately sounds baffled rather than offended, and Mike decides to take pity on him.

“School day doesn’t end for fifteen minutes,” he says. “I had to let the kids go early.”

“But,” Specter pauses, “it’s three o’clock.”

“Yeah,” Mike says. “And classes end at three fifteen, how long has it been since you were in school?”

“None of your business.”

Mike scoffs, imagining the disgruntled scowl on Specter’s face when he grumbles at the sound. For such a hotshot, all the airs this guy puts on, he sure is easy to rile up.

“You called me first,” Specter says then, abruptly brushing off his own awkwardness. “What’s the problem now, did you dig up another minor drug charge for me to waste my time on? Do you want me to set up a scholarship for juvenile delinquents in your name?”

“Dude, that sounds awesome.” Mike drops into his chair and kicks his feet up on his desk. “But seriously, I just wanted to thank you for helping Peter out.”

“Don’t call me ‘dude.’”

“Oh, a thousand pardons, my liege.”

Specter mutters something to himself that might be “You little shit,” or that might just be Mike projecting, but either way, it makes him grin out the window into the murky light of the clouded afternoon. It’s funny, isn’t it, how easily they fall into this banter, this back-and-forth. Like a couple of old friends, like they’ve known each other all their lives instead of a few weeks. Maybe Specter feels it too, maybe this is as easy for him as it is for Mike.

“Why’d you call me back?”

Specter hums. “I know you might not encounter a lot of this in your line of work, but I have a little something called ‘class.’ You went out of your way to show your appreciation for my work, I didn’t want to…leave you hanging.”

Harvey Specter, hotshot corporate attorney, called Mike Ross, overworked and underpaid high school American History teacher, to acknowledge that Mike called him, a week ago, to thank him for his efforts in helping Mike’s student out of a jam, even though it was way below his pay grade. Huh. Mike drums his fingers against his armrest; it sure does sound sort of unusual, laid out end to end like that.

Maybe they have more in common than he first thought.

“I see,” he says. “And I don’t suppose you have any plans to put your money where your mouth is? What with all this class of yours?”

This game can’t go on forever, but Mike sure as hell won’t be the first one to give in.

Harvey clicks his tongue and hums softly.

“Let me take you out to lunch.”

Take who where to what?

Mike means to say something, really he does. He has a retort on the tip of his tongue, all ready to go, ready to put Harvey in his place. Him and his smug attitude, his holier-than-thou façade.

Harvey Specter wants to take him out to lunch.

Harvey Specter. Out to lunch.

“Does Tuesday work for you?” Harvey prompts. Mike blinks a couple of times and sets his feet down on the floor.

“I eat lunch every day.”

Oh, for god’s sake…

Mike curls forward and presses his face into the palm of his hand, and Harvey snorts.

“Should I take that as a yes?”

Digging his nails into his hairline, Mike shakes his head. “I get a half hour for lunch on a good day,” he says into his chest. “You want me to get out to Manhattan and back in time for my afternoon class, I’d need some kind of transporter. Time machine.”

“Mm-hm,” Specter murmurs. “How about dinner?”

All that and the guy still wants to take him out? Either Specter has the most rigid code of ethics on the planet, or he’s dead set on laughing in Mike’s face in person.

Then again, a free meal is a free meal.

“How about Thursday?”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Specter says, but he sounds like he’s smiling, so Mike figures he’s doing okay. “Thursday, eight o’clock. Odo, you know it?”

“Um.”

“Twentieth between fifth and sixth,” Specter answers his own question. “See you there.”

“Twenty— Yeah,” Mike fumbles. “Uh, see you there.”

A while later, a few seconds or maybe more, Mike moves his phone from his ear and looks down at the display. The call’s been hung up for a bit, long enough for his phone to revert to the home screen; he didn’t even notice. Specter didn’t say goodbye or anything.

Sure, seems about right. Mike doesn’t hold it against him.

\---

Mike knows how long it takes him to bike into Manhattan. He knows how long it takes him to bike from the bridge to twentieth street. He knows how to read a goddamn street sign. The thing Specter forgot to warn him about, though, the thing he so conveniently left off of his invitation, is that the restaurant isn’t exactly labeled in any obvious way, no neon signs or calligraphed awning or anything.

Point is, it’s not his fault he’s late.

He’s not even late, technically; _technically,_ their reservation is for eight, so _technically,_ he’s exactly on time. Specter’s one of those “five minutes early is ten minutes late” kinds of guys, though, he just knows it. He’s gonna give Mike hell over this, the son of a bitch.

Mike could leave. He could turn around and walk away, he could avoid setting himself up like that for a shot he can so clearly see coming right at him.

He straightens his tie and walks through the door.

At a small table against the wall, perfectly situated to keep his eye on the door, Specter sits with a smug grin on his face, the bastard. Well, nothing for it; Mike marches across the floor and slides into the chair opposite.

“Traffic was a bitch.”

Furrowing his brow, Specter nods and folds his arms behind his empty place setting. “Of course, of course,” he says graciously. “I must have been watching someone else bike up and down the street for the past five minutes.”

“Mm,” Mike raises the glass in front of him to his lips, “must’ve been.”

Specter keeps his stoicism for all of three seconds before he cracks, coughing a poorly-disguised laugh into his fist that nearly makes Mike choke on his water.

“Gotta be honest with you, man,” Mike says, shaking his head, “you could’ve warned me about the whole ‘hiding in plain sight’ motif they’ve got going on here.”

“My mistake, inviting you to a place with a little class.”

“Are you calling me uncultured?”

“ _That’s_ the word I was looking for!”

Mike narrows his eyes in a petulant glare. Specter might be a hotshot corporate attorney, and he might have some inexplicable soft spot for Mike, or whatever’s going on, but Mike has been working full time with teenagers long enough to know deflection when he sees it. Emotional immaturity: Looks the same on everybody.

“Maybe you were just trying to protect yourself.”

Specter’s smiles wavers, just a bit.

“Excuse me?”

Yeah, okay. Mike’s got his number.

“Well.” Mike opens his menu and makes a show of perusing the appetizers. “I mean, if I didn’t show, you could just tell people it’s because I’m too stupid to read a map, right? I’m sure the great Harvey Specter never gets stood up or anything.”

Pressing his lips together, Specter tilts a bit to the side and opens his own menu, fixating on some single point in the middle of the page even though he’s probably familiar enough with the contents to know what he wants already. Mike peeks up at him surreptitiously, raising the menu to hide most of his face in case Specter looks back at him.

“I’ll have the chef’s premium sashimi,” Specter says eventually, passing his menu to a waitress Mike didn’t notice approaching. “And a Sansho the Bailiff.”

“Uh.” Mike looks down, his eyes automatically scanning for single-digit prices. “Chicken tsukune?”

The waitress makes a note on her order pad and continues to smile at him as Specter arches his eyebrows.

“And?”

Mike frowns. “And…water?”

“He’ll have the wagyu bozushi,” Specter says, picking Mike’s menu out of his hands and passing it to the waitress. “And water.”

Mike smiles at her until she walks away and his glare instantly snaps to Specter’s stupid smug face. “ _Harvey,_ ” he hisses, “I can’t afford _forty dollar sushi._ ”

Mike doesn’t realize he’s used Harvey’s first name until he sees Harvey’s lips turn up in a cocky little smirk, his eyes sparking in a funny way that makes Mike feel like he’s just lost some argument he didn’t even know they were having.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m paying.”

He sort of wishes they hadn’t ordered yet, if only so he’d still have his menu to hide behind. Not that that would accomplish much in the long run; in fact, Harvey would probably make fun of him for it. Right, on second thought, maybe things are fine the way they are.

Still, he can only stand the silence for so long before it starts getting heavy.

“Seriously,” he says, looking up at Harvey, who’s _still_ smirking. “Thank you. For what you did for Peter.”

Harvey shrugs and unfolds his napkin.

“Just doing my job.”

“Yeah.” Mike presses down on the tines of his fork, something to do with his hands as he pushes through Harvey’s defenses. “Driving all the way out to the middle of Queens, that’s definitely how I’d want to spend my afternoon if I were you.”

“No skin off my teeth, I just give the directions and buckle my seat belt.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, you upper class types are all the same.”

“Hey, not everyone gets paid to look this good.”

Mike laughs into his hand, looking down at the floor and then again at Harvey, looking right back at him, the smugness finally clearing away. Can we talk now, maybe? Are you ready for some honest answers to honest questions?

“But, really, Harvey,” he tries the name out again, not quite liquid off his tongue just yet but nothing he can’t handle, only a little awkwardness that they’ll get rid of in time, sure. “Why did you do it?”

Drumming his fingertips against the edge of the wooden table, Harvey leans back in his chair, his smile softening, turning inward. Some long story, maybe, some secret history he doesn’t want to share just yet. Not here, not today.

Something to hold onto for next time.

“By the time your principal called my boss,” Harvey says, “you’d already gone out to the precinct. He—your principal, he told her you’d gunned it down there as soon as you heard, that you dropped everything to help this kid out. He knew you wouldn’t be able to handle it on your own, that you didn’t have the ‘clout,’ was the word he used, but you went anyway, because you had to give it a shot.”

Mike quirks his lips. “So you wanted to see me make an ass of myself?”

Harvey taps his fingertips again. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anybody try to practice law and be honest about it,” he says. “I thought I could use a change of pace.”

A little honesty, huh? Is that what this is? Of course, everyone could probably use some more of that in their lives, couldn’t they. One of those lessons that keeps getting re-learned.

“You know,” Mike says, “you’re not giving me a huge amount of confidence in the American legal system.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“Are you admitting that you lie for a living?”

“You passed the bar, you must’ve met a few lawyers in your life.”

Mike wrings his wrist in an affected bow. “Ah, touché.”

Smiling, Harvey tips his chin down and chuckles to himself, an answer laugh bubbling up in Mike’s chest at the sight of it. It’s a funny sort of thing, whatever’s going on between them; Harvey might be cagey by his nature, a trained attorney and all that, but Mike knows there’s nothing he can’t ask him. Nothing they can’t talk about, if they want, nothing Mike can’t say.

“So,” he ventures. “You miss it?”

Harvey raises his head back up and cocks his eyebrows. “Miss what?”

“You know,” Mike presses. “Honesty. Fresh outta law school, I’m sure you all have that idealism. That, determination to make the world a better place, looking out at all the changes that need to be made and deciding you’re the one who’s gonna make them.”

“I must’ve skipped that step.”

“Aren’t you getting around to it a little late?”

He expects a sharp retort, or even just a flippant one, something quick and off-the-cuff to let Harvey keep his persona, his untouchable veneer intact. Harvey doesn’t, though; he doesn’t bother to deny it again, doesn’t bother to pretend he didn’t get himself involved, that this was some kind of accident or thing he stumbled into with his eyes only half open. It’s admirable, is what it is. Mike appreciates that kind of directness.

Half-directness, more like. It’s on the right track, that’s gotta count for something.

“How about you?” Harvey asks, evading the question entirely as the waitress returns with his cocktail. “You passed the bar, how’d you end up in the public school system?”

“How does anybody, I was on the right path and then I got knocked off of it.” Mike shrugs. “Never really found my way back, but I figured this was a good way to…you know. Give back to society. Make sure other kids who get knocked off of their paths can get another shot.”

It’s not that he’s ashamed of where he’s ended up. It’s not that he doesn’t want Harvey to know how it happened. He’ll tell him the whole story, someday; they’ll get it all out in the open, all the sordid details. But they’re having fun for now, talking about silly things, about serious things in silly ways, and there’ll be plenty of time for all the darkness later. Harvey has some too, Mike is sure of it; they can compare notes, it’ll be fun. A nice bonding exercise or something.

“Very noble.”

Harvey says it with a hint of bite, a little sardonic, and Mike smiles a little wider, a little brighter.

“Hey, everyone needs to have someone in their corner.”

You know how it is, right? This life, the things we want out of it. The important stuff.

Harvey nods slowly, his hand closing around the snifter in front of him as some kind of afterthought. Mike sets his hands down in his lap and smiles again.

“Anyway, it’s gotten me this far, so, I can’t complain.”

“You never wanted to ask for something more?”

Mike laughs. “Yeah, from who? I’m already paying for my kids’ textbooks out of my own pocket, I don’t think there’s any room in the budget for favors.”

Harvey didn’t mean it like that. He meant it in that existential way that people who have money and power can afford to go around asking it, the way angsty teenage protagonists in YA-novel-cum-blockbusters murmur it to each other under the starlit night sky in the middle of a war zone. Mike knows how he meant it. Mike used to ask himself the very same question, until the day he figured out that he’d be better off being grateful for what he has.

Harvey shakes his head anyway.

“Maybe you just haven’t asked right questions.”

“‘Can I have more money?’”

Harvey glares at him dryly.

Mike purses his lips.

“‘Please can I have more money?’”

“Mike, I know you’re not this stupid.”

Mike scoffs, a defensive reflex to hide his suddenly creeping nerves. “Do you now.”

“I do,” Harvey says, “because if you’re as stupid as you’re acting, then that means I wasted the last month and a half of my life cleaning up your mess, and I’m wasting my time here tonight taking you out to dinner, and Mike, if there’s one thing I don’t like to do with my time, it’s waste it.”

Any time Harvey’s chosen to spend on Mike is a waste, isn’t it? The big hotshot lawyer in his ivory tower lowering himself down into the trenches for a little bit of a lark. What the hell does Mike have to offer him that he can’t get a hundred other places that would fit him a hell of a lot better?

But, well. Didn’t he tell him? In his way?

This is something honest. This is something true. It isn’t a whole truth, it isn’t an open book, but it’s…an open door. A chance to walk into something new, something fresh and clean. A chance to help each other in ways that other people won’t.

“Of course.” Mike leans back in his chair. “We can’t have that.”

Maybe it’s his imagination that Harvey relaxes his shoulders at that, but then again, maybe it isn’t.

“No,” he says, “we can’t.”

“I gotta say, though,” Mike says, “I never would’ve pegged you as the kind of guy who’d stoop to slumming it with the other half of society.”

Harvey shrugs, that sharp glint coming back into his eye.

“I guess there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“No shit.” Mike mirrors his conceited posture, folding his arms across his chest. “Guess I’ve got my work cut out for me then.”

That was okay, right? That’s what Harvey was aiming at, that’s what they’ve spent the last few months falling into? Harvey isn’t going to throw him out by his ear and make him bike all the way back home on an empty stomach, is he? Or even worse, let him stay and then stick him with the bill. Right? No, right?

Mike does his best to keep the overly confident smile on his face, the relaxed curvature of his spine, as Harvey merely looks at him across the table, still fondling his cocktail.

“I guess you do,” he says.

Mike’s smile widens.

Let the games begin.

**Author's Note:**

> “I got knocked into a different life. And I have been wishing for a way back ever since.”  
> —Mike, “Pilot” (s01e01)
> 
> “I’m inclined to give you a shot, but what if I decide to go another way?”  
> “I’d say that’s fair. Sometimes I like to hang out with people who aren’t that bright, you know, just to see how the other half lives.”  
> —Harvey and Mike, “Pilot”
> 
> The 104th precinct is located in the western part of Queens, including the general area in which I tend to place Mike’s childhood home.
> 
> “Ace” is a slang term for particularly high-quality marijuana. In New York State, possession of up to and including two ounces of marijuana is a violation, whereby a person may be taken into custody and issued an appearance ticket (time and place to appear in court), but it’s not an actual crime.
> 
> [Odo](https://www.odo.nyc/) is a well-regarded and _very_ expensive Japanese restaurant in downtown Manhattan. Sansho the Bailiff is one of their signature cocktails, the primary ingredient being pineapple-infused Scotch. (Yes. Really.) Chicken tsukune is basically like one skewer of chicken, it’s part of a meal but not a full meal on its own.
> 
> Banerjee, Neela, Song, Lisa, & Hasemyer, David. “Exxon: The Road Not Taken.” Inside Climate News, 16 Sep. 2015, [insideclimatenews.org/news/](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming). Accessed 24 Sep. 2020.


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